UC Berkeley Web Feature

Newly
minted buttons for the Energy Biosciences Institute were
sported by several of the press conference's
speakers, who included California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, BP America's Robert
Malone, and Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. Oakland
Mayor Ron Dellums, Berkeley '62 (bottom right),
was among the local politicians who came to
celebrate the EBI's launch. (Steve
McConnell photos)

BERKELEY – Excitement and purpose were palpable today (Thursday, Feb. 1) as the governors of California and Illinois and other speakers addressed a packed press conference announcing the formation of the Energy Biosciences Institute. There
was a sense that this new industry-university partnership,
to develop and deliver clean, renewable sources of
energy, might be a first step toward ending the Age
of Fossil Fuels and avoiding global cataclysm.

'We congratulate BP for their farsighted vision
[in tackling]
the most difficult problem of our time: solving
the global energy crisis through technology
that avoids damage to our environment.'

– Robert J. Birgeneau
UC Berkeley chancellor

And that's why today was not only "a good day
for the University of California, but a really good
day for California — and a tremendous day for
Mother Earth," said UC President Robert Dynes
about BP's selection of UC Berkeley and Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory to drive its 10-year,
$500 million research initiative, along with the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The project's focus on renewable biofuels for road
transport, along with three other key areas — conversion
of hydrocarbons into clean fuels, improved recovery
from existing oil and gas reservoirs, and carbon
sequestration — will have an "immense
positive impact on our world," said BP America
Chairman Robert Malone.

The institute will be the world's first public or
private initiative of this scope to focus on what
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau called
the "most
difficult problem of our time — solving
the global energy crisis through technology that
avoids damage to our environment."

The enormous scale of the project, and the
urgency of its mission, places it in the same league
historically with the U.S. scientific community's
mission to put a man on the moon in the '60s, said
Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich. "We
can do in biofuels, with the Energy Biosciences Institute,
what NASA did for space," he predicted.

"When we focus our
energies and resources and commitment behind something,
we have the innovation and science and technologies
to lead the world and get it done," Blagojevich
said.

'California is not waiting for a clean-energy
revolution. No — we are actually the
leaders in the revolution.'

– Arnold
Schwarzenegger
Governor of California

Birgeneau agreed, calling the quest for new energy
sources that will be not only sustainable, but commercially
viable and environmentally friendly, "our generation's
moonshot." It is because they are public universities,
not private, that UC Berkeley and the University
of Illinois are uniquely suited to
host this endeavor, Birgeneau emphasized — sharing
a mission to address the major problems facing
our society.

Indeed, Lawrence Berkeley Lab has "already
been mounting a full-scale assault on the energy
problem for two years," said LBNL Director Steven
Chu, in partnership with other research centers
and faculty at UC Berkeley.

California, which is a global leader
in energy efficiency and conservation, is also the
right state to mount such an undertaking, said
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He
was "immensely proud" that, after looking at university
and research institutions all over the world, BP
chose California in recognition of its leadership
and commitment to clean energy.

"California is not waiting for a clean-energy
revolution. No — we are actually the leaders
in the revolution," said Schwarzenegger, citing
California Assembly Bill 32, known as the global
warming bill, in which the state pledges to reduce
its global warming emissions to 2000 levels by 2010
and eventually to 80 percent below 1990 levels by
2050.

California is also a world leader in biotechnology,
said BP Chief Scientist Steve Koonin, but he noted that the biotech
industry to date has been largely focused on biomedicine
and the development of pharmaceuticals. Fewer
applications have emerged for the chemical and agricultural industries, but the new biosciences institute will likely
produce major advancements for both in the quest
for new, more efficient biofuels.

Given the University of California's track record
in what Dynes called "research, development,
and delivery, or RD&D," Koonin expects
progress to be rapid. And in addition to its arsenal
of research expertise, UC Berkeley is the right partner "to
anticipate and manage the social impacts of large-scale
biofuels production," he said. "It's time
for us to get to work."